HOOKS: You want to use small,sharp hooks. Required to usecircle hooks now. Normally, a1/0 or 2/0 circle hook will befine.

You want to use a heavy sinkerto get your bait down quickly.You do not want the fish to startbiting until you are ready. A heavyweight takes it to the bottomquicker and makes it more difficultfor fish to steal it on the waydown. Plus it helps to keeptension on the line while you arereeling it in.

BAIT: Triggerfish are very aggressive eaters and will take just about any live or cut bait. They are very adept at stealing your bait. They do not hit the bait and run with it like other reef fish, but run in or hover there and nip at it with their teeth. Their small mouths and fang-like teeth can quickly nip a bait into pieces leaving an empty hook. You can tell if triggerfish are present since they remove small, neat chunks from your bait. If you feel several nibbles and find that your bait has been cut in pieces with surgical precision, chances are good a triggerfish (or several) has moved in. It takes a certain amount of skill, patience and no small quantity of luck to actually get a hook set into a triggerfish The key is to size it to their small mouth and to use a tough bait that is hard to nibble off. Always be sure not to bury the hook tip and barb in the bait, but leave it outside of the bait.

picture on the way

BAIT SIZE: Use small thumb nail size cubes (approximately 1") of squid or cut bait with the skin on. Size the bait to the size of the hook you are using.

BAIT TYPE: Use cut bait with tough skins. Bonita (LIttle Tunny) 1" chunks with the skin on are good. Remember, the hook must go through the skin.

1" squares of cut squid

Pink colored fish bites in squid flavor are also good.

TECHNIQUES:

Since triggerfish inhabit the same reef habitat as red snapper and grouper, you have several different types of fish competing for your bait. Also, Ruby Red Lips (Tomtates) and other bait fish will be after your small bait too.

Normally you want to start with a larger bait/hook rig targeting the grouper or large red snapper. Grouper tend to stay on the bottom in holes while the larger red snapper are normally higher in the water column or away from the wreck. This bait will also tend to excite the other fish present. A chum bag might help too.

After a few drops and you find you have lost your bait or find small bite marks in it, you are probably getting your bait nipped at by triggers. To target Triggers, replace your large hooks and bait with smaller ones as recommended above, and add a heavy sinker (say 8 oz). They are not really leader/tackle shy, so as long as you have small hooks and bait, you should be ok.

Drop your newly baited small hook and bait to the bottom as quickly as possible. Use enough sinker to reach the bottom fast. Once you hit bottom, immediately start reeling the bait back in slow and steady. This keeps tension on your line and allows you to feel the fish the moment he starts to nip at it. Since we are using circle hooks, it is important not to "set" the hook or jerk the rod when you feel the bite. When you feel the bit, start reeling real fast. If the fish has the hook point in his mouth, then so long as you keep the line tight by reeling quickly you will probably hook the fish. The inside of the triggers mouth is fairly easy to hook, so a small sharp hook works very well. If you yank the rod or attempt to set the hook by any method other than fast reeling you will be much slower in moving the hook which allows the fish time to spit it out. You will also rapidly move that heavy sinker which, if it doesn’t knock the hook out of the fishes mouth on the way up, will almost certainly do so on the way back down.

OK, it is very difficult not to yank the rod when a fish bites but you need to learn not to do that on fast biting fish such as snapper and particularly on triggerfish. You will occasionally land one using a traditional hook set, but a savvy angler that uses the reel and not the rod to set the hook, will consistently do much better. Small sharp hooks and a rapid retrieve will beat out brute force every time.

Another technique to use after you have been fishing the bottom awhile and have not had any luck, is to try starting to fish higher up in the water column and fish the line as it goes down. Like snapper, the larger triggers tend to be higher than the smaller ones. This works like this:

Instead of lowering your rig all the way to the bottom, stop it higher up in the water column, say a few seconds after it disappears from sight on the way down. Then slowly lift your rod tip up and down slowly about 3-4 times. You might call it a slow jig. You want to keep tension on the line at all times, don't let any slack in the line. If you feel the slightest nipple, start reeling. If you have no bite, release the line and count to one thousand three again and stop it at a lower depth. Repeat the rod tip slow jig.

Continue this until your bait is on the bottom. When your sinker hits the bottom, reel in for 2-3 seconds and start the process over, but on the way up. If you get it about half way up and still have no fish on, you need to just bring it on in to the boat as they have probably already stolen your bait.

If the fish continue to steal your bait, you need to either go to smaller hooks to catch them or move on.

Before circle hooks were required, people would also use either a heavy duty sabiki rigs or small strong extra-sharp single hook with pieces of squid on them. If they knew they were on triggers, or after they had been fishing the bottom awhile, they would drop the squid tipped hooks about half way down the water column, stop the line, and immediately set the hook, before the bite was felt.

I have caught triggers using a small vertical (butterfly) jig throughout the water column.

CLEANING TRIGGER FISH

There several ways to clean a trigger fish. Click on the following link for one method.

A serrated fillet knife is nice to have as it is easier to cut through the tough skin with one. A regular fillet knife just can't penetrate the triggers armored skin whereas a serrated knife literally zips right through! Once you remove the two slabs of meat, use a regular fillet knife to remove the skin from the fillets. That armored skin that made it so difficult to remove the meat from the body, now makes it very easy to remove the skin from the meat. With a little practice, you can fillet these fish faster than any other species.

Another method is to just cut through the skin (not the meat) around the entire fillet then grab the skin with a pair of pliers and pull. The skin will come off in one piece, exposing all the white meat which will be completely intact and still on the bone.

The ribs on a trigger are fairly small and it is easy to cut through the rib bones. Then it is a straight fillet all the way down the backbone.

The Gray Trigger Fish (Balistes capriscus) is normally found offshore in the Gulf of Mexico on artificial reefs, rock outcroppings and natural bottom in depths between about 50 to 300 feet. It does not grow that large, ranging normally from around12 inches up to around 20 inches and a few pounds. Females of the species grow larger and live longer than males, reaching lengths of more than 22 inches. Spawning occurs off shore during the spring and summer, when fish are 3 years old or about 12 inches long. It is not a strong swimmer and propels itself through the water by waving its large dorsal and anal fins as opposed to its tail. They are an unusual fish to watch swim. Click on the following site for a You tube video of a Triggerfish swimming and eating.

The fish gets its name from the locking dorsal spine, presumably as a defense against predators. If you lift the fishes large dorsal spine forward, it will lock into place and project outward as a large sharp spike.

Once locked in place, it will not move, no matter how much you push or pull on it. To get it to lower, you must push down on the "trigger", the small spine located right behind the big one. This unlocks the large dorsal spine which allows it to drop flush with the skin easily.

Triggerfish are usually aggressive feeders, relentless in their attacks upon anything they perceive as food. They have small mouth which is equipped with anopposing set of large incisor teeth that are used todislodge and crush small mussels, sea urchins,barnacles, and other mollusks/crustaceans. Theywill take live and cut bait. Many anglers curse theirarrival because of their tendency to destroy baitsset for other "more desirable" fish such as snapperand grouper. When present in large numbers noother fish has a chance to reach your bait beforea trigger seizes it and chomps it to shreds. Theywill sometimes group up in a chum slick and willkill any larger bait you put out.

They have very strong bony jaws which make itdifficult to set a hook. And, their skin is very tough, almost armored, and is difficult to pierce even with a knife. For this reason, you should not attempt to gaff a trigger and some people consider them hard to clean.

They compete in the same habitat preferred by Red Snapper and Gag Grouper. (Triggerfish aresaid to be an indicator that Gag Groupers are also present). While they normally inhabit the bottom, they will rise up in the water column to get to your bait on the way down.